What would happen if ED was outlawed?

[Anonymous]

Donut-hole families are insufferable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't happen but I will play.
I suspect it would negatively impact students needing financial aid. It's pretty clear colleges use ED to lock in highly qualified full pay students. They need them in order to be able to offer spots to students who can only attend with FA.

My kid got quite a bit of FA during ED, so not for the rich

Same here. It isn’t only for the rich; DC got a ton of FA at his ED. Sure, there were some other schools DC considered that probably would have cost even less, but it was absolutely worth it for us to pay a few thousand more for a school he is truly excited about attending.

You are missing the point, yes, NPC financial aid is offered during ED. However, the schools also know how many full pay students they have locked in during ED to be able to admit students needing aid. Not all yield is equal, none of the need blind schools have more than 50% of their class on aid, they can't afford to the full pay students who currently benefit the most from waitlists (something the schools admitted in the course of that litigation) would have even bigger advantages in RD if ED went away and those needing aid would be waitlisted since the schools wouldn't know if they could afford to admit them until they understood their yield on full pay students.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the solution is limited ED. No more than 25% of the class, maybe? Enough to cover a reasonable amount of FA, but not so much that families who need to compare offers feel locked out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

And yet we produce such a high proportion of high-stats kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

And yet we produce such a high proportion of high-stats kids.

They will be more than welcome in state flagships. I'm a donut-hole family myself and don't hate ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids top choices don’t do ED so I have no personal interest here but it feels like people oversimplify and sometimes miss the broader point.

We are a donut hole family and I feel like my issues is schools that do offer merit aid and have an ED round feel stacked for the wealthy.

For example, I recognize I don’t want to pay full price for Boston College and the price during ED and the price outside ED are likely to be identical because they simply don’t offer merit except to a very very small handful of kids.

For a schools that do offer merit, it is asking kids to agree to an unknown price in advance. If ED across the board offered no merit and everyone who was selected ED automatically paid full price, or if schools would do ED merit pre-reads, it would feel more reasonable.

What happens instead is that it favors kids that can pay full price even if the actual price they are charged is in the range of a donut hole family. Those donut hole families don’t apply because they can’t pay full price and don’t know what the actual price will be.

This argument that “if you can’t afford it in ED you can afford it outside ED” makes sense for a small subset of schools that give no merit, but falls apart for schools that do give merit because you have no idea if you can afford it in ED because the price is unknown.

Merit aid is not a stand-in for financial aid. If you NEED financial aid, then the answer is don't ED to a school that offers merit to only a handful of students and is stingy with financial aid. Or, if we're living in a fantasy land where we can outlaw whatever we want, then make it illegal for schools to offer ED if they offer merit aid but not FA.

The majority of ED applications are to elite schools. Most don't offer merit, only need-based aid. Which makes this point moot. Either you can afford the NPC estimate or you can't, regardless of whether the application is ED or RD. The number doesn't change. I understand it is very frustrating to realize a $90k/yr school is unaffordable, but no one is entitled to attend one. We are donut hole, applied to a school that showed we'd get $25+ in aid. The remaining $65K is not easy, but we decided the education was worth the sacrifices. It was a tough choice between that and a state flagship honors college, due to cost. Easy to see the decision going the other way. But it did not affect the decision to ED, because the financial package was the same regardless. We ran all the numbers and decided our financial pain level accordingly.

Chasing merit meant going down 1-2 tiers; we decided not to. But even though the specific merit sum is unknown, it is not that difficult to figure out a likely number. Schools like Grinnell and Oberlin offer a set financial incentive to apply ED; then the merit offers can add an additional chunk of money. Based on previous years' offers, you can get a pretty good idea of the likely number based on stats. If the offer, with merit, doesn't end up in the anticipated range, you can pull out for financial reasons.

Lastly, most schools below T-20 offer non-binding EA. Indeed a number of T-10s do as well. ED isn't even an option for that many schools, much less a necessity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

Really? I am not one but I get it. It comes as a shock to most to find out they fall into this category. The colleges all highlight need blind admissions and zero tuition for families under 200K income etc. What they don't highlight is that income is not the only aspect of family finances they consider, very few people expect their home equity or retirement savings to disqualify their kids for aid. At what point do you expect them to tell their kids they only have a shot at in state public schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

I’m not sure why it is insufferable to think it would be better if the price was known before you sign a contract.

I can’t think of anything else in life where you are expected to sign a contract without insight into whether additional discounts are available.

[Anonymous]

I’m not asking schools to change their price, I just think it is reasonable to expect to know the price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Posts like this spring up every year at this time. In April there will be posts insisting that UVA should increase its enrollment, or UMD needs to admit more students from the DC suburbs.

They all stem from the same place. Some parents have disappointed kids after decisions come out. They feel the anger that comes with the helplessness that they can't save their kid from this disappointment, and so they fume. I get it. It's hard. It's also life. No matter how much you want it, you can't make the universe give your kid everything they want.

Take this anger and repurpose the energy it brings toward helping your kid get excited about whatever college they end up going to. It truly will be fine.

So true. We'll also start getting the posts attacking certain schools for various reasons, the REAL reason actually being that they dared to reject the poster's child. Like clockwork, every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could be found to violate anti trust law.

A simple solution to any perceived antitrust issues would be for schools to drop the requirement that accepted ED applicants withdraw all of their applications to other schools and, instead, the school would require that anED applicant submit the first semester’s tuition in full within a short designated time following acceptance. If the applicant didn’t submit the tuition, the acceptance would be withdrawn and the application would then be denied.

Why require this? What about ED is the issue that requires some sort of change? Do most people not ultimately attend their ED school? If so, then your solution makes sense. If the issue is that ED offers an unfair advantage to the wealthy, I still don’t see how your solution will solve anything. Also, people needing FA cannot pay their tuition on the spot. I’m also not sure how that would work with 529s — you can’t dispense funds for the next year in the current year.

Yet another person who thinks ED benefits applicants - and not the universities. Wow! And I thought it was gen z that had no critical thinking skills: you gen xers are really something.

DP. Of course ED benefits students too! The student is choosing their first choice university, and if the school accepts them, they are done. Mission complete. ED benefits the schools by giving them a tangible number of applicants whom they know will be attending, if accepted. It's a win-win. If you don't like it, DON'T USE IT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

And yet we produce such a high proportion of high-stats kids.

They will be more than welcome in state flagships. I'm a donut-hole family myself and don't hate ED.

+1
Another donut family here and we like ED. Wish every school had the option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

I’m not sure why it is insufferable to think it would be better if the price was known before you sign a contract.

I can’t think of anything else in life where you are expected to sign a contract without insight into whether additional discounts are available.

It is when you constantly whine about it and propose all these idiotic changes to the process.

Not to mention the eternal “everybody is cheating except me” complaints.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

And yet we produce such a high proportion of high-stats kids.

They will be more than welcome in state flagships. I'm a donut-hole family myself and don't hate ED.

+1
Another donut family here and we like ED. Wish every school had the option.

+2 My kid was the only one who ED'd out of 15 kids applying. We ran the NPC and were okay with the estimate (did get some aid). She got in, the other 14 kids didn't. It was her first choice, but not theirs. We loved ED for that kid. Younger kid seems less likely to have a clear #1, so probably will not ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Donut-hole families are insufferable.

I’m not sure why it is insufferable to think it would be better if the price was known before you sign a contract.

I can’t think of anything else in life where you are expected to sign a contract without insight into whether additional discounts are available.

Yet another instance where universities are similar to hospitals.